They read The Mediator: Shadowland
by ImmortalAriadneGoddess
Summary: Susannah, Helen, Brad, Jake, David, Andy, and Ghost Jesse read the Mediator series. Characters set from Haunted
1. Prologue

(Disclaimer: I don't own the Mediator , nor am I Meg Cabot)

A bright like flashed out across the mysterious red room that had several doors marked seperately: BATHROOM, KITCHEN, BOYS, GIRLS, and had two parallel white couches facing each other. From the light fell six figures and one shimmered.

"OW!" said Susannah Simon. "What the hell happened?"

"I don't know, though, maybe we were drugged or sucked into a space time continium that ripped the fabric of the universe and transported us here simultaneously," said David as he got up on his knees.

Jake and Brad were sprawled out on the couches dozing as they slowly got up.

Andy and Helen Ackerman were scanning the room and Helen asked Andy, "What happened? Where are we?"

"I don't know."

Susannah and Jesse's widened when they caught sight of each other. Between the two couches was a small coffee table and laid on it were six books and a note. Doc approached the table and read the note aloud,

_**" Dear Ackerman Family and Jesse,**_

_**You'll be wondering why I suddenly brought you here. These books are from Suze's POV of the past and the things to come , I just want you to be prepared, brace yourself**_

_**-A Friend**_

Everyone stared at David for a second.

"Oh from Suze's Point of View! Should we read now?"

"No!"

"Why sweetie, anything you wanna share?"

"No," she groaned.

David, Jake, Brad sat on couch while Susannah sat next to Helen and Andy. Jesse sat down on an armchair somewhat close to Susannah.

"Who's gonna read?"

"I will," said Helen

**The Mediator Book 1: Shadowland**

'Mediator?'Everyone except Suze, David, and Jesse thought.


	2. Chapter One

'Oh great why me?' thought Suze.

Helen read,

**They told me there'd be palm trees.**

"Who told you?" asked Brad

**I didn't believe them, but that's what they told me. They told me I'd be able to see them from the plane.**

**Oh, I know they have palm trees in Southern California. I mean, I'm not a complete moron.**

Brad doubted it but kept his mouth shut.

**I've watched 90210, and everything. But I was moving to Northern California. I didn't expect to see palm trees in Northern California. Not after my mom told me not to give away all my sweaters.**

**"Oh, no," my mom had said. "You'll need them. Your coats, too. It can get cold there. Not as cold as New York, maybe, but pretty chilly"**

"You betcha," muttered Susannah.

**Which was why I wore my black leather motorcycle jacket on the plane. I could have shipped it, I guess with the rest of my stuff, but it kind of made me feel better to wear it.**

From her right she could hear her mom sigh , "How does that comfort you."

"I don't know it just made me feel more comfortable."

**So here I was, sitting on the plane in a black leather jacket, seeing these palm threes through the window as we landed. And I thought, Great. Black leather and palm trees. Already I was fitting in, just like I knew I would...**

**...Not.**

Brad snickered under his breath.

**My mom isn't particularly fond of my leather jacket, but I swear I didn't wear it to make her mad, or anything. I'm not resentful of the fact that she decided to marry a guy who lives three thousand miles away, forcing me to leave school in the middle of my sophomore year; abandon the best – and pretty much only – friend I had since kindergarten, leave the city I've been living in for all of my sixteen years. Oh, no. I'm not a bit resentful.**

Helen breathed deeply, that was a little too sarcastic for her liking but that was just like her dear little girl.

**The thing is I really do like Andy, my new stepdad. He's good for my mom. He makes her happy. And he's very nice to me.**

"I really do," Susannah said as she smiled.

"That's nice," he said grinning glad to have her 'seal' of approval.

**It's just moving to California thing that bugs me.**

**Oh and did I mention Andy's three other kids?**

**They were all there to greet me when I got off the plane. My mom, Andy and Andy's three sons. Sleepy, Dopey and Doc, I call them.**

The three mentioned raised their eyebrows at her.

"Who's Dopey? That can't be me can it? I'm not as smart as David but really.. Dopey, Suze?"

David just beamed at his nickname, Doc.

**They're my new stepbrothers.**

**"Suze!" even if I hadn't heard my mom squealing my name as I walked through the gate, I wouldn't have missed them – my new family. Andy was making his two youngest boys hold up this big sign that said Welcome Home, Susannah! Everybody getting off my flight walked by it, going 'aw, look how cute' to their travel companions, and smiling at me in this sickening way.**

**Oh yeah. I'm fitting in. I'm fitting in just great."Ok," I said, walking up to my new family fast. "You can put the sign down now."**

Susannah just rolled her eyes, her typical mother.

**ut my mom was too busy hugging me to pay any attention. "Oh Suzie" she kept saying. I hate it when anybody but my mom calls me Suzie, so I shot the boys this mean look over her shoulder, just in case they got any big ideas. They just kept grinning at me from over the stupid sign.**

Brad inwardly shuddered a bit Suze was evil, he just knew it.

"Oh, trust me we didn't," said Doc.

**Dopey because he's too dumb to know any better,**

"Hey!" he protested.

**Doc because – well I guess because he might have been glad to see me. **

" I certainly was," he said beaming.

**Doc's weird that way. Sleepy, the oldest, just stood there, looking...well sleepy.**

**"How was your flight, kiddo?" Andy took my bag off my shoulder and put it on his own. He seemed surprised by how heavy it was and went, "whoa, what've got in here, anyway? You know it's a felony to smuggle New York City fire hydrants across state lines."I smiled at him. Andy's this really big goof, but he's a nice big goof. He wouldn't have the slightest idea what constitutes a felony in the state of New York since he's only been there like five times. Which was, incidentally, exactly how many visits it took him to convince my mother to marry him. **

"It was wonderful," said Helen as she placed a light kiss on his lips.

The three stepbrothers made several vomiting faces at them.

**It's not a fire hydrant," I said. "It's a parking meter. And I have four more bags"**

**"Four?" Andy pretended he was shocked. "What do you think you're doing, moving in or something?" **

"Not funny."

**Doc, Andy's youngest kid, is twelve, but he's going on about forty. He spent almost the entire wedding reception telling me about alien cattle mutilation and how Area 51 is just this big cover-up by the American government, which doesn't want us to know that We Are Not Alone."Oh Suzie," my mom kept saying, "I'm so glad you're here. You're just going to love the house. It just didn't feel like home at first, but now that you're here...oh, and wait until you've seen your room. Andy's fixed it up so nice..."**

**Andy and my mom spent weeks before they got married looking for a house big enough for all four kids to have their own rooms. They finally settled on this huge house in the hills of Carmel, which they'd only been able to afford because they brought it in this completely wretched state,and this construction company Andy does a lot of work for fixed it up at this big discount rate. My mom had been going on for days about my room, which she keeps swearing is the nicest one in the house.**

"Completely unfair, I wanted that room," Brad said childishly.

"Too bad, I had it fair and square so deal with it."

**The view!" she kept saying. "An ocean view from the big bay window in your room! Oh, Suze, you're going to love it."I was sure I was going to love it. About as much as I was going to love giving up bagels for alfalfa sprouts, and the subway for surfing, and all that sort of stuff. **

"You're too sarcastic sometimes, Suzie," said Helen.

"I just had a bit of a fix adjusting to my surroundings."

**For some reason, Dopey opened his mouth and went "do you like the sign?" in that stupid voice of his.**

"My voice isn't stupid!"

**I can't believe he's my age.**

"Hey!"

**He's on the school wrestling team, though what can you expect? All he ever thinks about, from what I could tell when I had to sit next to him at the wedding reception – I had to sit between him and Doc, so you can imagine how the conversation flowed – is choke holds and body-building protein shakes. **

Andy just shook his head.

**"Yeah, great sign" I said, yanking it out of his meaty hands and holding it so that the lettering faced the floor. "Can we go? I wanna pick up my bags before someone else does"**

**"Oh, right" my mom said. She gave me one last hug. "Oh, I'm just glad to see you! You look so great..." and then, even though you could tell she didn't want to say it, she went ahead and said it anyway, in a low voice, so no one else could hear: "though I've talked to you before about that jacket, Suze. And I thought you were throwing those jeans away."**

'Oh those horrid jeans, might as well throw 'em away when I'm doing the laundry.' thought Helen.

**I was wearing my oldest jeans, the ones with the holes in the knees. They went really well with my black silk T and my zip-up ankle boots. The jeans and boots coupled with my black leather motorcycle jacket and my Army-Navy Surplus shoulder bag, made me look like a teen runaway in a made-for-TV movie.**

"You sorta looked like a gang memeber, Suze." acknowledged Jake.

**But hey, when you're flying for six hours across the country, you want to be comfortable.**

**I said that, and my mom just rolled her eyes and dropped it. That's the good thing about my mom. She doesn't harp, like other moms do. Sleepy, Dopey and Doc have no idea how lucky they are.**

Helen 's face was burning she smiled at her Suzie," That was very sweet of you, Suzie."

"Well it's true."

**All right" she said, instead. "Let's get your bags." Then, raising her voice, she called, "Jake, come on. We're going to get Suze's bags"**

**She had to call Sleepy by name, since he looked as if he had fallen asleep standing up. I asked my mother once if, Jake, who is a senior in high school, has narcolepsy or possibly a drug habit,**

"You think I'm doing drugs?" asked Jake, perplexed.

"You were dozing off all the time." said Susannah as if that explained everything.

**And she was like, "no, why would you say that?" like the guy doesn't just stand there blinking all the time, never saying a word to , that's not true. He did say something to me, once. Once he said, "hey, are you in a gang?" he asked me that at the wedding, when he caught me standing outside with my leather jacket on over my maid of honour's dress, sneaking a cigarette. **

To say Helen was surprised was an understatement her jaw went slightly slack.

"Susannah Simon! You were smoking!"

"It was just one time, I never did it again, I quit cold turkey." said Suze before her mother could interrupt her further.

"All right, but I better never hear you smoking ever again."

**Give me a break, all right? It was my first and only cigarette ever. I was under a lot of stress at the time. I was worried my mom was going to marry this guy and move to California and forget all about me.**

"Suzie, why didn't you ever say anything to me?"

"I don't know," she said while she shrugged.

"I love you you know that nothing will ever change that." said Helen, smiling at her daughter.

**But he's not the shiniest rock in the rock garden, if you know what I mean.**

**Doc was still going on about wind velocity. He was explaining the speed with which it was necessary to travel in order to break through the earth's gravitational force. This speed is called escape velocity. I decided Doc might be useful to have around, homework-wise, even if I am three grades ahead of him.**

"How do you know that?"

"I actually read Dopey."

**While Doc talked, I looked around. This was my first trip ever to California, and let me tell you; even though we were still only in the airport – and it was San Jose International Airport – you could tell we weren't in New York anymore. I mean, first off, everything was clean. No dirt, no litter, no graffiti anywhere. **

"It certainly a whole lot nicer." commented Helen.

**The concourse was all done up in pastels, too, and you know how light colours show the dirt. Why do you think New Yorkers wear black all the time? Not to be cool. Nuh-uh. So we don't have to haul all our clothes down to the Laundromat every single time we wear that didn't appear to be a problem in sunny CA. From what I could tell, pastels were in. This one woman walked by us, and she had only pink leggings and a white Spandex sports that's all. If this is an example of what's de rigueur in California, I could tell I was in for some major culture you know what else was strange? Nobody was fighting. There were passengers lined up here and there, but they weren't raising their voices with the people behind the ticket counter. In New York, if you're a customer, you fight with the people behind the counter, no matter where you are – airport, Bloomingdales, hot dog stand. here. Everybody here was just very calm.**

"One of the benefits of living here."

**And I guess I could see why. I mean, it didn't look to me like there was anything to get upset about. Outside, the sun was beating down on those palm trees I'd seen from the sky. There were seagulls – not pigeons, but actual big and grey seagulls – scratching around in the parking lot. And when we went to get my bags, nobody even checked to see if the stickers on them matched my ticket stubs. No everybody was just like, "buh-bye! Have a nice day!" – she was my best friend back in Brooklyn; well, ok my only friend, really – told me before I left that I'd find there were advantages to having three stepbrothers. She should know since she's got four – bit steps, but real brothers. Anyway I didn't believe her any more than I'd believed people about the palm trees. But when Sleepy picked up two of my bags, and Dopey grabbed the other two, leaving me with exactly nothing to carry, since Andy had my shoulder bag, I finally realized what she was talking about: brothers can be useful. They can carry really heavy stuff, and not even look like it's bothering them.**

"I think sometimes I can still feel 'em." said Jake.

"Yeah my balance suffered or somethin.'

**Hey, I packed those bags. I knew what was in them. They were not light. But Sleepy and Dopey were like, no problem here. Let's get moving.**

**My bags secure, we headed out into the parking lot. As the automatic doors opened, everyone – including my mom – reached into a pocket and pulled out a pair of sunglasses. Apparently, they all knew something I didn't know. And as I stepped outside I realized what it was.**

**It's sunny here.**

"No shit!"

"Language, Bradley!"

**Not just sunny, either, but bright – so bright and colourful, it hurts your eyes. I had sunglasses, too, somewhere, but since it had been about forty degrees and sleeting when I left New York, I hadn't thought to put them anywhere easily accessible. When my mother had first told me we'd be moving – she and Andy decided it was easier for her, with one kid and a job as a TV news reporter, to relocate than it would be fore Andy and his three kids to do it, especially considering that Andy owns his own business – she explained to me that I'd love Northern California. "It's where they filmed all those Goldie Hawn, Chevy Chase movies!" she told me. I like Goldie Hawn, and I like Chevy Chase, but I never knew they made a movie together. **

Helen blushed.

**t's where all those Steinbeck stories you had to read in school took place" she said. "You know, The Red Pony"**

**Well I wasn't very impressed. I mean, all I remembered from The Red Pony was that there weren't any girls in it, although there were a lot of hills. And as I stood in the parking lot, squinting at the hills surrounding the San Jose International Airport, I saw that there were a lot of hills, and the grass on them was dry and brown.**

**But dotting the hills were these trees, trees not like any I'd ever seen before. They were squashed on top as if a giant fist had come down from the sly and given them a thump. I found out later these were called Cyprus trees. **

**"**You looked it up Suze?" said Brad, clearly shocked.

"Why?"

"Did ya?"

"Yeah."

**And all around the parking lot, where there was evidently a watering system, there were these fat bushes with these giant red flowers on them, mostly squatting down at the bottom of these impossibly tall, surprisingly thick palm trees. The flowers, I found out, when I looked them up later, were hibiscus.**

"Those flowers are truly beautiful." said suprisingly Susannah

**ummingbirds that come right up to your window? The only birds that ever came up to my window back in Brooklyn were pigeons. My mom never exactly encouraged me to feed them.**

**My moment of joy about the hummingbirds shattered when Dopey announced suddenly "I'll drive," and started for the driver's seat of this huge utility vehicle we were approaching.**

**"I will drive," Andy said, firmly."Aw, Dad," Dopey said. "How'm I ever going to pass the test if you never let me practise?""You can practise in the Rambler," Andy said. He opened up the back of his Land Rover, and started putting my bags into it. "That goes for you too Suze"**

**This startled me. "What goes for me too?"**

**"You can practise driving in the Rambler" he wagged a finger jokingly in my direction. "But only if there's someone with a valid licence in the passenger seat"**

**I just blinked up at him. "I can't drive" I said.**

**Dopey let out this big horse laugh. "You can't drive?" he elbowed Sleepy, who was leaning against the side of the truck, his face towards the sun. "Hey Jake, she can't drive!" **

Andy was glaring at his middle-child.

**"It isn't at all uncommon, Brad" Doc said, "for native New Yorkers to lack a driver's licence. Don't you know that New York City boasts the largest mass-transit system in North America, serving a population of thirteen point two million people in a four thousand square miles radius fanning out from New York City through Long Island all the way to Connecticut? And that one point seven billion riders take advantage of their extensive fleet of subways, buses and railroads every year?"**

**Everybody looked at Doc. Then my mother said, carefully, "I never kept a car in the city."Andy closed the doors to the back of the Land Rover. "Don't worry, Suze," he said. "We'll get you enrolled in a driver's Ed course right away. You can take it and catch up to Brad in no time."I looked at Dopey. Never in a million years had I ever expected that someone would suggest that I needed to catch up to Brad in any capacity whatsoever.**

Susannah, David, and Jake tittered, while Brad glared at Susannah.

**But I could see I was in for a lot of surprises. The palm trees had only been the beginning. As we drove to the house which was a good hour away from the airport – and not a quick hour either, with me wedged between Sleepy and Dopey, with Doc in the 'way back', perched on top of my luggage, still expounding on the glories of the New York City Transportation Authority – I began to realize that things were going to be different – very, very different – than I had anticipated, and certainly different from what I was used to.**

**And not just because I was living on the opposite side of the continent. Not just because everywhere I looked, I saw things I never have seen back in New York: roadside stands advertising artichokes or pomegranates, twelve for a dollar field after field of grapevines twisting and twisting around wooden arbours; groves of lemon and avocado trees; lush green vegetation I couldn't even identify. And arcing above it all, a sky so blue, so vast, that the hot-air balloon I saw floating through it looked impossibly small – like a button at the bottom of an Olympic-sized swimming pool.**

"I was sort of impressed," she admitted.

**There was the ocean; too, bursting so suddenly into view that at first I didn't recognize reflecting the sun, flashing little Morse code SOSs at me. The light was so bright; it was hard to look at without sunglasses. But there it was, the Pacific Ocean...huge, stretching almost as wide as the sky, a living, writhing thing, pushing up against a comma-shaped strip of white beach.**

"You were really impressed, weren't you?"

**eing from New York, my glimpses of ocean – at least the kind with a beach – had been few and far between. I couldn't help gasping when I saw it. And when I gasped, everybody stopped talking – except for Sleepy, who was, of course, asleep.**

**"What?" my mother asked alarmed. "What is it?"**

**"Nothing" I said. I was embarrassed. Obviously, these people were used to seeing the ocean. They were going to think I was some kind of freak that I was getting so excited about it. "Just the ocean"**

"Freak," Brad muttered, not low enough so Andy heard.

"Grounded for 5 days."

**," said my mother. "Yes isn't it beautiful?"**

**Dopey went, "good curl on those waves. Might have to hit the beach before dinner"**

**"Not," his father said, "until you've finished that term paper"**

**"Aw, Dad!"**

**This prompted my mother to launch into a long and detailed account of the school to which I was being sent to the same one Sleepy, Dopey and Doc attended. The school, named after Junipero Serra, some Spanish guy who came over in the 1700s and forced the Native Americans already living here to practise Christianity instead of their own religion, was actually a huge adobe mission that attracted twenty thousand tourists a year, or something.**

**I wasn't really listening to my mother. My interest in school has always been pretty much zero. The whole reason I hadn't been able to move out here before Christmas was that there had been no space for me at the Mission School, and I'd been forced to wait until the second semester started before something opened up. I hadn't minded – I'd gotten to live with my grandmother for a few months, which hadn't been at all bad. My grandmother, besides being a really excellent criminal attorney, is an awesome cook.**

**I was sort of still distracted by the ocean, which had disappeared behind some hills. I was craning my neck hoping for another glimpse, when it hit me. I went, "wait a minute. When was this school built?"**

**"The eighteenth century," Doc replied. "the mission system, implemented by the Franciscans under the guidelines of the Catholic Church and the Spanish government, was set up not only to Christianize the Native Americans, but also to train them to become successful trades people in the new Spanish society. Originally, the mission served as a-"**

**"Eighteenth century?" I said, leaning forwards. I was wedge between Sleepy – whose head had slumped forwards until it was resting on my shoulder, enabling me to tell just by sniffing, that he used Finesse shampoo – and Dopey. Let me tell you, Gina hadn't mentioned a thing about how much room boys take up, which, when they're both nearly six feet tall, and in the two-hundred-pound vicinity, is a lot. "Eighteenth century?" **

"Why are you worried, Suzie?" said Helen.

"You'll see," said Susannah. She was not looking foward to this , oh, especially Jesse.

**My mother must have heard the panic in my voice, since she turned in her seat and said; soothingly, "now Suze, we discussed this. I told you there's a year's waiting list at Robert Louis Stevenson, and you told me you didn't want to go to an all-girls school, so Scared Heart is out, and Andy's heard some awful stories about drug abuse and gang violence in the public schools around here-"**

**"Eighteenth century?" I could feel my heart starting to pound hard, as if I'd been running. "That's like three hundred years old!"**

**"I don't get it." we were driving through the town of Carmel-by-the-Sea now, all picturesque cottages – some with thatched roofs even – and beautiful little restaurants and art galleries. Andy had to drive carefully because the traffic was thick with people in cars with out-of-state licences, and there weren't any stoplights, something that, for some reason, the natives took pride in. "what's so bad" he wanted to know, "about the eighteenth century"**

**My mother said, without any inflection in her voice whatsoever – what I call her bad-news voice, the one she uses on TV to report plane crashes and child murders, "Suze has never been very wild about old buildings." **

**Oh," Andy said. "Then I guess she isn't going to like the house"**

**I gripped the back of the hard rest. "Why?" I demanded, in a tight voice. "Why am I not going to like the house?"**

**I saw why, of course, as soon as we pulled in. The house was huge, and impossibly pretty, with Victorian-style turrets and a widow's walk – the whole works. My mom had had it painted blue and white and cream, and it was surrounded by big shady pine trees, and sprawling flowering shrubs. Three stories high, constructed entirely from wood, and not the horrible glass-and-steel or terracotta stuff the houses around it were made of, it was the loveliest, most tasteful house in the neighbour hood. **

"Certainly is," Andy said emitting delight.

**And I didn't want to set foot in it.**

That wiped the grin off his face.

**I knew when I'd agreed to move with my mom to California that I'd be in for a lot of changes. The roadside artichokes, the lemon groves, the ocean...they were nothing, really. The fact was the biggest change was going to be sharing my mom with other people. In the decade since my father had died, it had been just the two of us. And I have to admit, I sort of liked it like that. in fact, if it hadn't been for the fact that Andy made my mom so obviously happy, I would have put my foot down and said no way to the whole moving thing.**

"I'm so selfish," Helen said while putting her head in her hands.

"No, you aren't Mom I was just having some trouble coming in grasp with things.

**But you couldn't even look at them together – Andy and my mom – and not be able to tell right away that they were completely gaga over each other. And what kind of daughter would I have been if I said no way to that? so I accepted Andy, and I accepted his three sons, and I accepted the fact that I was going to have to leave behind everything I had ever known and loved – my best friend, my grandmother, bagels, SoHo – in order to give my mom the happiness she I hadn't really considered the fact that, for the first time in my life, I was going to have to live in a house.**

**And not just any house, either, but, as Andy proudly told me as he was taking my bags from the car, and thrusting them into his sons' arms, a nineteenth-century converted boarding house. Built in 1849, it had apparently had quite a little reputation in its day. Gunfights over card games and women had taken place in the front parlour. You could still see the bullet holes. In fact, Andy had framed one rather than filling it in. It was a bit morbid, he admitted, but interesting too. He bet we were living in the only house in the Carmel hills that had a nineteenth-century bullet hole in it.**

Andy chuckled at the mention.

**uh, I said. I bet that was true.**

**My mother kept glancing in my direction as we climbed the many steps to the front porch. I knew she was nervous about what I was going to think. I was kind of irked at her, really, for not warning me. I guess I could understand why she hadn't though. If she told me she had brought a house that was more than a hundred years old, I wouldn't have moved out here. I would have stayed with Grandma until it came time for me to leave college. Because my mom's right: I don't like old buildings.**

**Although I saw, as old buildings went, this one was really something. When you stood on the front porch, you could see all of Carmel beneath you, the village, the valley, the beach, the sea. It was a breathtaking view, one that people would – and had, judging from the fanciness of the houses around ours – pay millions for ; one that I shouldn't have resented, not in the least.**

**And yet, when my mom said, "come on Suze. Come see your room," I couldn't help shuddering a little.**

"Again, why?"

"You'll see," was all she said.

**The house was beautiful inside as it was outside. All the shiny maple and cheerful blues and yellows. I recognized my mom's things, and that made me feel a little better. There was the pie-safe she and I had brought once on a weekend trip to Vermont. There were my baby pictures,hanging on the wall in the living room, right alongside Sleepy, Dopey, and Doc's. There were my mother's books in the built-in shelves in the den. Her plants, which she'd paid so exorbitant a price because she'd been unable to bear parting with them, were everywhere on wooden stands, hanging in front of the stained-glass windows, perched on top of the newel post at the end of the there were also things I didn't recognize: a sleek white computer sitting on the desk where my mother used to write out cheques to pay the bills; a wide-screen TV incongruously tucked into a fireplace in the den, to which shift-sticks were wired for some sort of video game;**

"X-BOX." stated Brad

**Surf boards leaning up against the wall by the door to the garage; a huge slobbery dog, who seemed to think I was harbouring food in my pockets since he kept thrusting his big wet nose into them. **

"That was so cute," said Helen.

**hese all seemed like obtrusively masculine things, foreign things in the life my mother and I had carved out for ourselves. They were going to take some getting used to.**

**My room was upstairs, just above the roof of the front porch. My mother had been going on nervously for almost the entire trip from the airport about the window seat Andy had installed in the bay window. The bay windows looked out over the same view as the porch, that sweeping vista that incorporated all of the peninsula. It was sweet of them really to give me such a nice room, the room with the best view in the whole when I saw how much trouble they'd gone to, to make the room feel like home to me – or at least some excessively phantom girl...not me.**

"Sorry," said Susannah, " I really love my room."

**I had never been the glass-topped dressing table, princess phone type – how Andy had put cream-coloured wallpaper, dotted with blue forget-me-nots, all along the top of the intricate whine wainscoting that lined the walls; how the same wallpaper covered the walls of my own personal adjoining bathroom; how they brought me a new bed – a four-poster with a lace canopy, the kind my mother had always wanted for me and had evidently been unable to resist – I felt bad about how I acted in the car. I really did. I thought to myself, as I walked round the room, ok, this isn't so bad. So far you're in the clear. Maybe it'll be all right, maybe no one was ever unhappy in this house, maybe all those people who got shot deserved it...**

Everyone so far (exc. Susannah,Jesse) were confused.

**Until I turned towards the bay window, and saw that someone was already sitting on the window seat Andy had so lovingly made for me.**

"HUH?"

**Someone who was not related to me, or to Sleepy, Dopey or Doc.**

"Who's there?"

**turned towards Andy, to see if he'd noticed the intruder. He hadn't, even though he was right there, right in front of his mother hadn't seen him, either. All she saw was my face. I guess my expression must have not been the most pleasant, since her own fell, and she said with a sad sigh,**

**"Oh Suze, not again."**

"But what happened?"

"It's just that.. um.. well Suze goes one into her peculiar moods when umm... never mind." Helen said exasparated.

" I do not! It's just that well... Nevermind, you wouldn't understand."

Helen said, " Who wants to read next?"

Andy said, "I will." He took the book and read the next entry.


	3. Chapter Two

Chapter Two

Suddenly out of nowhere Jesse's form materialized and became solid. Jesse was alive!

the Ackerman family screamed and Andy dropped the book and stood up.

"Who are you?"

"Jesse," he said after a few moments of blinking and touching himself like he might dematerialize again and become a spirit once again only visible to Mediators.

David's eyes widened and shared a quick meaningful look with Suze.

"I believe I was meant to read a few books with you sir about Susannah, _Senor._

Andy eyed him warily, "Alright," he said after picking up the book and sitting down.

Susannah was still mildy in shock._Jesse was alive! Maybe now they could be together! Yeah, but remember he doesn't want anything to do with me..._

A note fluttered downwards on Jesse's lap.

_**Jesse, **_

_**For the remainder of the books you'll be alive for the time being. Enjoy!**_

_**-A Dear Friend**_

Andy read,

**I guess I should explain.**

"Yeah," chorused throughout the room.

**I'm not exactly your typical sixteen year-old girl**

"Really," said Brad his voice laced with sarcasm.

**Oh, I seem normal enough, I guess. I don't do drugs, or drink, or smoke–Well ok, expect for that one time when Sleepy caught me. I don't have anything pierced, except my ears and only once on each earlobe. I don't have any tattoos. I've never dyed my hair. Expect for my boots and leather jacket, I don't wear excessive black. don't even wear dark fingernail polish. All in all, I am pretty normal, everyday, American teenage girl.**

**Except, of course, for the fact I can talk to the dead.**

Pure, loud silence laced the room. Everyone's eyes landed on Susannah.

Helen was worried a tad bit for her daughter's sanity.

"We always knew Suze was insane."

"Bradley!" 3 guesses who said that.

**I probably shouldn't put it that way. I should probably say that the dead talk to me. I mean, I don't go around initiating these conversations. In fact, I try to avoid the while thing as much as possible.**

**It's just that sometimes they won't let me.**

**The ghosts I mean.**

**I don't think I'm crazy.**

"Really?" Brad said saracastically.

"Don't worry Suze, I believe you." said David

"Thanks," said Suze eyeing her mother and Jesse.

**At least, not any crazier than your average sixteen year-old. I guess I might seem crazy to some people. Certainly the majority of the kids in my old neighbourhood thought I was. Nuts, I mean. I've had the school counsellors sicced on me more than once. Sometimes I even think it might be simpler just to let them lock me even on the ninth floor of Bellevue**

"what's that?"

– **Which is where they lock up the crazy people in New York – I probably wouldn't be safe from the ghosts. They'd find is where they lock up the crazy people in New York – I probably wouldn't be safe from the ghosts. They'd find me.**

"Oh."

I** remember my first. I remember it as clearly as any of my other memories of that time, which is to say not very well, since I was about two years old. I guess I remember it about as well as I can remember taking a mouse away from our cat and cradling it in my arms until my horrified mother took it away.**

Helen shuddered, " I've never liked any rodents. Then I saw you holding one...," she admitted.

**Hey, I was two, ok? I didn't know then that mice were something to be afraid of. Ghosts, either, for that matter. That's why fourteen years later, neither of them frighten me. Startle me, maybe, sometimes. Annoy me, a lot. But frightened me. Never.**

**The ghost, like the mouse, was little, grey and helpless. To this day, I don't know who she was; I spoke to her, some baby gibberish that she didn't understand. Ghosts can't understand two-year-olds any better than anybody else. She just looked at me sadly from the top of the stairs of our apartment building. I guess I felt sorry for her, the way I had for the mouse, and wanted to help her. Only I didn't know how. So I did what any uncertain two-year-old would do. I ran for my mother. hat was when I learned my first lesson concerning ghosts: only I can see them. **

'Father Dom, and Paul can too.' thought Susannah

**Well, obviously, other people can see them. How else would we have haunted houses and ghost stories and Unsolved Mysteries and all of that? But there's a difference. Most people who see ghosts only see one. I can see all ghosts.**

**All of them. Anybody. Anybody who has died and for whatever reason is hanging around on earth instead of going wherever it is he or she is supposed to go, I can see.**

**And let me tell you, that is a lot of ghosts.**

**I found out the same day that I saw my first ghost that most people – even my own mother – can't see them at all. Neither can anyone else I have ever met. At least, no one who'll admit it. **

"Who's as stupid to admit they're wacko?" said Brad.

"You are," said David.

"Oi!"

**Which brings us to the second thing I learned about ghosts that day fourteen years ago: it's really better, in the long run, not to mention you've seen one. Or, as in my case, any.**

**I'm not saying my mother figured out that it was a ghost I was pointing to and gibbering about that afternoon when I was two. I doubt she knew it. She probably thought I was tying to tell her something about the mouse, which she had confiscated from me earlier that morning. But she looked gamely up the stairs and nodded and said, "Uhuh. Listen, Suze. What do you want for lunch today? Grilled cheese? Or tuna fish."**

**I hadn't exactly expected a reaction similar to the one the mouse had gotten – my mother, who'd been cradling a neighbour's newborn at the time, had let out a glorious shriek at the sight of the mouse in my arms, and had screamed even harder at my proud announcement, "look Mommy. Now I've got a baby too," which I realize now she couldn't have understood, since she didn't get it about the ghost.**

"You actually said that?" as Brad guffawed.

She admitted it grudgingly and fixed him with a glare with which he withered.

**But I had expected at least an acknowledgement of the thing floating at the top of the stairs. I was given explanations for virtually everything else I encountered on a daily basis, from fire hydrants to electrical outlets. Why not the thing at the top of the stairs?**

**But as I sat munching my grilled cheese a little later, I realized that the reason my mother had offered no explanation for the grey thing was that she hadn't been able to see it. To her, it wasn't there.**

**At two years old, this didn't seem unreasonable to me. It just seemed, at the time, like another thing that separated children from adults: children had to eat all their vegetables. Adults did not. Children could ride the merry-go-round in the park. Adults could not. Children could see the grey things. Adults could not.**

"That is a rather plausible theory," said David while he mulled it over.

**And even though I was only two years old, I understood that the little grey thing at the top of the stairs was not something to be discussed. Not with anybody. Not ever.**

**And I never did. I never told anyone about my first ghost, nor did I ever discuss with anyone the hundreds of other ghosts I encountered over the course of the next few years. What was there to discuss really? I saw them. They spoke to me. For the most part, I didn't understand what they were saying, what they wanted, and they usually went away. End of story.**

**It probably would have gone on like that indefinitely if my father hadn't suddenly up and died.**

Helen whispered," Suzie."

That tugged at their heartstrings, them knowing the effect and loss of losing a parent.

**Really. Just like that. One minute he was there, cooking and making jokes in the kitchen like he'd always done, and the next day he was gone.**

A tear rolled down Susannah's cheeck and quickly wiped it away depriving the view of anyone watching her cry ; but Jesse did he wished he could tell her everything was going to be okay and call her _querida..._but he couldn't what could he offer her?

**And people kept assuring me all through the week following his death – which I spent on the porch in front of our building, waiting for my dad to come home – he was never coming back.**

"The worst part is when you realize they're not going to be around anymore and they won't reassure or do those things they used to." said David whilst Jake put an arm around him.

**I, of course, didn't believe their assurances. Why should I? My dad, not coming back? Were they nuts? Sure, he might have been dead. I got that part. But he was definitely coming back. Who was going to help me with my math homework? Who was going to wake up early with me on Saturday mornings and make Belgian waffles and watch cartoons? Who was going to teach me to drive, like he'd promised, when I turned sixteen?**

The three brothers nodded sympathetically , they all understood.

**y dad might have been dead, but I was definitely going to see him again. I saw lots of dead people on a daily basis. Why shouldn't I see my dad?**

**It turned out I was right. Oh, my dad was dead. No doubt about that. He'd died of a massive coronary. My mom had his body cremated, and she put his ashes in an antique German beer tankard. You know that kind with the lid. My dad had always liked beer. She put the tankard on a shelf, high up, where the cat couldn't knock it over, and sometimes, when she didn't think I was around, I caught her talking to it.**

Helen's cheeks flooded with color. "You saw that?"

"Yeah, late at night, sometimes in the day telling Dad about me and you and how we missed him," Susannah admitted hoarsely.

**This made me feel really sad. I mean, I guess I couldn't blame her, really. If I didn't know any better, I'd probably have talked to that tankard too.**

**But that, you see, was what all those people on my block had been wrong about. My dad was dead, yeah. But I did see him again.**

**In fact, I probably When he was alive, he had to go to work most days. Now that he's dead, he doesn't have all that much to do. So I see him a lot. Almost too much, in fact. His favourite thing to do is suddenly materialize when I least expect it. It's kind of annoying.**

"Parents," David, Jake, Brad and Susannah echoed.

**My dad was the one who finally explained it to me. So I guess, in away, it's a good thing he did die since I might never have known, otherwise.**

**Actually that isn't true. There was a tarot-card reader**

"But, honey, you can't trust those types they just want some money out of your pocket." She asserted

**Who said something about it once. It was at a school carnival. I only went because Gina didn't want to go alone. I pretty much thought it was a crock, but I went along because that's what best friends do for one another. The woman – Madame Zara, Psychic Medium – read Gina's cards, telling her exactly what she wanted to hear: oh, you're going to be very successful, you'll be a brain surgeon, you'll marry at thirty,**

"Yeah and Dopey I mean Brad's a genius."

"Oi!" he said indignantly.

**And have three kids, blah, blah, blah. When she was done, I got up to go, but Gina insisted Madame Zara do a reading for me too.**

**You can guess what happened. Madame Zara read the cards once, looked confused, and shuffled them up and read them again. Then she looked at me.**

**"You" she said, "talk to the dead"**

**This excited Gina. She went, "oh my god! Oh my god! Really? Suze, did you hear that? You can talk to the dead! You're a psychic medium, too!"**

**"Not a medium" Madame Zara said. "A mediator"**

"?"

Gina looked crushed. "A what? What's that?"

**But I knew. I'd never known what it was called, but I knew what it was. My dad hadn't put it quite that way when he'd explained things, but I got the gist of it, anyway: I am pretty much the contact person for just about anybody who croaks leaving things...well, untidy. Then if I can, I clean up the mess.**

**That's the only way I can think to explain it. I don't know how I got so lucky – I mean I am normal in every other respect. Well almost, anyway. I just have this unfortunate ability to communicate with the dead.**

**Not any dead, either. Only the unhappy dead.**

**So you can see that my life has really been just a bowl of cherries these past sixteen years.**

**Imagine, being haunted – literally haunted – by the dead, every single minute of every single day of your life. It is not pleasant. You go down to the deli to get a soda – oops, dead guy on the corner. Somebody shot him. And if you could just make sure the cops get the guy who did it, he can finally rest in peace.**

"You must have the endurance and composure of a martyr." spoke Andy

"Sometimes, I don't know how I get through the day and live." replied Susannah

**And all you wanted was a soda.**

**Or you go to the library to check out a book – oops the ghost of some librarian comes up to you and wants you to tell her nephew how mad she is about what he did with her cats after she kicked the bucket.**

**And those are just the folks who know why they're still sticking around. Half of them don't have any idea why they haven't slipped off into the afterlife like they're supposed to.**

**Which is irritating because, of course, I'm the schmuck who's supposed to help them there.**

**I'm the mediator.**

**I tell you, it's not a fate I would wish upon anybody.**

"Nope."

**There isn't a whole lot of pay-off in the mediation field. It isn't like anyone's ever offered me a salary or anything. Not even hourly compensation. Just the occasional warm fuzzies you get when you go a good turn for somebody. Like telling some girl who didn't get to say goodbye to her grandfather before he passed away that he really loves her, and he forgives her for that time she trashed his El Dorado. That kind of thing can warm the heart, it really can.**

"That's so cute!"

**metimes, though, they can get rough. I mean, they try to hurt people. On purpose. That's when I usually get mad. That's when I usually feel compelled to kick a little ghost butt.**

**Which was what my mom meant when she said, "oh Suze. Not again" when I kick ghost butt, things have a tendency to get a little...messy. **

"Messy doesn't even begin to cover it sometimes the cops get involved, you trespass, your room is destroyed & end up at the Hospital."

**Not that I had any intention of messing up my new room. Which is why I turned my back on the ghost sitting on the window seat and said, "Never mind, Mom. Everything's fine. The room is great. Thanks so much"**

**I could tell she didn't believe me. It's hard to fake out my mom. **

"Sometimes you're just as clear as crystal.

**I know she suspects there's something up with me. She just can't figure out what it is. Which is probably a good thing because it would shake up the world as she knows it in too major a way. I mean she's a television news reporter. She only believes what she can see. And she can't see ghosts.**

**I can't tell you how much I wish I could be like her.**

"You do?"

**Well" she said. "Well, I'm glad you like it. I was sort of worried. I mean, I know how you get about...well, old places"**

**Old places are the worst for me because the older a building is, the more chance there is that someone had died in it, and he or she is still hanging around there looking for justice or waiting to deliver some final message to someone.**

**Let me tell you, this led to some pretty interesting results back when my mom and I used to go apartment hunting in the city. We would walk into these seemingly perfect apartments, and I'd be like, "Nuh-uh. No way" for no reason that I could actually explain. It's really a wonder my mom never just packed me off to boarding school.**

" I would never! I love you more than anything!"

**"Really, Mom" I said. "It's great. I love it"**

**Andy, hearing this, hustled around the room all excitedly, showing me the clap-on, clap-off lights**

"Never thanked you for it, so Thanks!"

"You're welcome," he said with a smile.

**Oh boy) and various other gadgets he's installed. I followed him around, expressing my delight, being careful not to look in the ghost's direction. It really was sweet, how much Andy wanted me to be happy. And I was determined, because he wanted it to so much, to be happy as it's possible for someone like me to be.**

**After a while, Andy ran out of stuff to show me, and went away to start the barbecue, since in honour of my arrival, we were having surf and turff for dinner. Sleepy and Dopey took off to 'hit some waves' before we ate, and Doc, muttering mysteriously about an 'experiment' he'd been working on,Drifted off to another part of the house, leaving me alone with my mother...sort of.**

**"Is it really all right, Suze?" my mom wanted to know. "I know it's a big change. I know it's asking a lot of you-"**

**I took off my leather jacket. I don't know if I've mentioned this, but it was pretty hot out for January. Like seventy. I'd nearly roasted in the car.**

"I know, I know I should've taken it off," she said as her mother opened and closed her mouth.

**And I supposed some of the stuff I've done in the past would seem pretty weird to someone who didn't know why I was doing it or couldn't see who I was doing it for. I have certainly been caught any number of times in places I wasn't supposed to be. I've been brought home by the police a few times, accused of trespassing or vandalism or breaking and entering.**

"Hence, my thinking you're in a gang."

"Am not!"

**And while I've never actually been convicted of anything, I've spent any number of hours in my mother's therapist office, being assured that this tendency I have to talk to myself is perfectly normal, but that my propensity to talk to people who aren't there probably isn't.**

**Ditto my dislike of any building not constructed in the past five years.**

**Ditto the amount of time I spend in graveyards, churches, temples, mosques, other people's (locked) apartments or houses, and school grounds after hours.**

**I supposed Andy's boys must have overheard something about this, and that's where the whole gang thing came from. But like I said, I've never actually served time for anything I've done.**

**And that two-week suspension in eighth grade isn't even reflected on my permanent school record.**

**So maybe it wasn't so unusual for my mother to be sitting there on my bed, talking about 'fresh starts' and all of that. It was kind of weird that she was doing it while this ghost was sitting a few feet away, watching us. But whatever. She seemed to have a need to talk about how things were going to be much better for me out on the West Coast.**

**And if that's what she wanted, I was going to do my best to make sure she got it. I had already resolved not to do anything out here that was going to end up getting me arrested so that was a start anyway.**

"Look how well that turned out."

**"Well" my mom said, running out of steam after her you-won't-make-friends-unless-you-project-a-friendly-demeanour speech. "I guess if you don't want help unpacking, I'll go see how Andy is doing with dinner.**

**Andy in addition to being able to build just about anything, was also an excellent cook, something my mother most definitely was not.**

Andy beaming grinned proudly.

**I said, "Yeah, Mom, you go do that. I'll just get settled in here, and I'll be down in a minute"**

**My mom nodded and got up – but she wasn't about to let me escape that easily. Just as she was about to go out the door, she turned around and said, her blue eyes all filled with tears. "I just want you to be happy, Suzie. That's all I ever wanted. Do you think you can be happy here?"**

**I gave her a hug. I'm as tall as she is, in my ankle boots. "Sure, Mom" I said. "Sure I'll be happy here. I feel at home already."Really?" my mom was sniffling. "You swear?"**

**"I do" and I wasn't lying, either. I mean, there'd been ghosts in my bedroom back in Brooklyn all the time, too**

**She went away, and I shut the door quietly behind her. I waited until I couldn't hear her heels on the stairs any more, and then I turned around.**

**"All right" I said, to the presence on the window seat. "Who the hell are you?"**

" Yeah who's the peeping tom in our sister's bedroom?"

Susannah was sooo not looking foward to this confrontation.

David grabbed the book and started reading.


	4. Chapter Three

Chapter Two

David read

**To say that the guy looked surprised to be addressed in this manner would have been a massive understatement. He didn't just look surprised. He actually looked over his shoulder, to see if it was really him I was talking to. But of course, the only thing behind him was the window, and through it, the incredible view of Carmel Bay. So then he turned back to look at me, and must have seen that my gaze was fastened directly on his face, since he breathed, "Nombre de Dios" in a manner that would have had Gina, who has a thing for Latino guys, swooning.**

"Ah, Gina." Susannah said with a shake of her head. 'I wonder how she is back in Brooklyn...'

**In case you haven't noticed, he isn't paying a whole lot of attention to you. Otherwise, he wouldn't have left you here to fester for-" I took in his outfit, which looked a lot like something they'd have worn on The Wild, Wild West. "What is it, a hundred and fifty years? Has it really been that long since you croaked?"**

**He stared at me with eyes that were as black and liquid as ink. "What is...croaked?" he asked, in a voice that sounded rusty from disuse.**

**I rolled my eyes. "Kicked the bucket" I translated. "Checked out. Popped off. Bit the dust." When I saw from his perplexed expression that he still didn't understand, I said with some exasperation. "Died."**

"Ever so tactful Suzie," Helen murmured while seeing the gentleman that had so suddenly appeared. Ohh he might be perfect for her Susannah! After a background check of course, she shuddered at the thought of her baby's last ex-boyrfriend.

**"Oh" he said. "Died." But instead of answering my question, he shook his head. "I don't understand," he said, in tones of wonder. "I don't understand how it is that you can see me. All these years, no one has ever-"**

**"Yeah" I said, cutting him off. I hear this kind of thing a lot, you understand. "well listen, the times, you know, they are a'changin'. So what's your glitch?"**

**He blinked at me with those big dark eyes. His eyelashes were longer than mine. It isn't often I run into a ghost who also happens to be a hottie,**

Jesse raised one dark eyebrow that also had a faint scar over it, at Susannah.

**but this guy...boy, he must have been something back when he was alive because here he was dead and I was already trying to catch a peek at what was going on beneath the white shirt he was wearing very much open at the throat,**

Susannah's face was turning pinker and pinker like the sunset.

"Ew! I don't want to hear you lusting over some dead guy!" complained Brad, disgusted with his stepsister's thoughts.

"Get over it!"

"Yeah, we see you doing that to Kelly Prescott all the time!" said Jake, grinning at his brother's childish discomfort.

"I do not!" 3 guesses who said that.

While Jesse was looking at Susannah curiously.

**Exposing quite a bit of his chest, and some of his stomach, too. Do ghosts have six-packs? This was not something I had ever had occasion – or a desire – to explore before.**

**Not that I was about to let myself get distracted by that kind of thing now. I'm a professional, after all. **

The three brothers snorted while Susannah glared at them.

**"Glitch?" he echoed. Even his voice was liquid, his English as flat and unaccented as I fancied my own was, slight Brooklyn blurring of my t's aside. He clearly had some Spaniard in him, as his Dios and colouring indicated, but he was as American as I was – or as American as someone who was born before California became a state could be."Yeah" I cleared my throat. He had turned a little and put a boot up on the pale blue cushion that covered the window seat, and I had seen definitive proof that yes, ghosts could indeed have six-packs. His abdominal muscles were deeply ridged, and covered with a light dusting of silky black hair.**

Brad looking thoroughly repulsed openly at his sister's thought complained,"Why the hell do we have to listen to Suze lusting over some guy?"

"Brad!" Andy warned.

**I swallowed. Hard.**

**"Glitch" I said. "Problem. Why are you still here?" he looked at me, his expression blank, but interested. I elaborated. "Why haven't you gone to the other side?"**

**He shook his head. Have I mentioned that his hair was short and dark and sort of crisp-looking, like if you touched it, it would be really, really thick? "I don't know what you mean."**

Helen glanced at Jesse when this was mentioned. Surely, it couldn't be him. He perfectly matched the description well. No that can't thought ghost weren't real... she reminded herself.

**I was getting sort of warm, but I had already taken off my leather jacket, so I didn't know what to do about it. I couldn't very well take off anything else with him sitting there watching me.**

Sternly glaring at Susannah, her parents said," You better have not."

**This realization might have contributed to my suddenly foul mood.**

**"What do you mean, you don't know what I mean?" I snapped pushing some hair away from my eyes. "You're dead. You don't belong here. You're supposed to be off doing whatever it is that happens to people after they're dead. Rejoicing in heaven, or burning in hell, or being reincarnated, or ascending another plane of consciousness or 're not supposed to be just...well...just hanging around."He looked at me thoughtfully, balancing his elbow on his uplifted knee, his arm sort of dangling. "And what if I just happen to like just hanging around?" he wanted to not supposed to be just...well...just hanging around."**

"He's teasing her! Better watch out."

**I wasn't sure, but I had a feeling he was making fun of me.**

"No!" said Brad in mock exasperation.

**And I don't like being made fun of. I really don't. People back in Brooklyn used to do it all the time –**

**Well, until I learned how effectively a fist connecting their nose could shut them up wasn't ready to hit this guy – not yet. But I was close. I mean, I'd just travelled a gazillion miles for what seemed like days in order to live with a bunch of stupid boys; I still had to unpack; I had already practically made my mother cry; and then I find a ghost in my bedroom. Can you blame me for being...well, short with him?**

**"Look," I said, standing up fast, and swinging my leg around the back of the chair. "You can do all the hanging around you want, amigo. Slack away. I don't really care. But you can't do it here. "Jesse," he said, not moving. **

All heads turned to face Jesse who was sort of shifting uncomfortably under their scrutinizing gazes.

Helen and the rest of the Ackerman family were stunned (except David of course).

Helen was incoherent, and apparently Andy too.

"But... but.. you're a ghost or were a ghost.. Oh!" she said.

"What the hell! Who cares? He's perving in our sister's bedroom! He's probably seen her undress already?" Jake exclaimed looking like he wanted nothing to kill him.

Jesse was nervous enough already feeling their heated gazes upon him. But they couldn't possibly kill them, would they?But you couldn't kill an already dead ghost. He relaxed and spoke softly, " I assure you i did nothing Susannah's mother wouldn't approve of."

Susannah continued for him, "Yeah! I mean what do you take me for, I could probably kick his derriere all the way to the Basilica."

Andy just said,"Maybe we will be talking about this later."

**"What?" "And you?" Jesse was smiling at me now. He had a nice face. A good face. The kind of face that, back in my old high school, would have gotten him elected prom king in no time flat. The kind of face Gina would have cut out of a magazine and taped to her bedroom wall.**

**Not that he was pretty. Not at all. Dangerous was how he looked. Mighty dangerous. He interrupted,**

Brad muttered, "Brave man."

**As amiable as if he hadn't heard me talking at all. "That woman – your mother – called you Suzie" his black eyes were bright on me. "Short for Susan?"**

"I would never name her that."

**Susannah" I said correcting him automatically. "As in, 'Don't You Cry For Me'"**

**He smiled. "I know the song"**

**"Yeah. It was probably in the top forty the year you were born, huh?"**

**He just kept on smiling. "So this is your room now, is it Susannah?"**

**"Yeah" I said. "Yeah, this is my room now. So you're going to have to clear out"**

**Shaking her head at her only daughter," it's called"I'm going to have to clear out?" he raised one black eyebrow. "This has been my home for a century and a half. Why do I have to leave it?"**

**"Because." I was getting really mad. Mostly because I was so hot, and I wanted to open a window, but the windows were behind him, and I didn't want to get that close to him. "This is my room. I'm not sharing it with some dead cowboy."**

Susannah flinched.

**That got to him. He slammed his foot back down on the floor – hard – and stood up. I instantly wished I hadn't said anything. He was tall, way taller than me, and in my ankle boots I'm five eight.**

**"I am not a cowboy" he informed me, angrily. He added something in Spanish in an undertone, but since I had taken French, I had no idea what he was saying. At the same time, my antique mirror hanging over my new dressing table started to wobble dangerously on the hook that held it to the wall. This was not due, I knew, to a California earthquake, but to the agitation of the ghost in front of me, whose psychic abilities were obviously of a kinetic bent. That's the thing about ghosts: they're so touchy! The slightest thing can set them off.**

Someone muttered," I think you do."

**Whoa," I said, holding up both my hands, palms outwards. "Down. Down boy"**

**"My family" Jesse raged, wagging a finger in my face. "Worked like slaves to make something of themselves in this country, but never, never as a vaquero-"**

"Cowboy," Brad said suprisingly.

The family stared at him.

"I pay attention in Spanish." he snapped.

**Hey" I said. And that's when I made my big mistake. I reached out, not liking the finger he was jabbing at me, and grabbed it, hard, yanking on his hand and pulling him towards me so I could be sure he heard me as I hissed. "Stop with the mirror already. And stop shoving your finger in my face. Do it again, and I'll break it." **

Helen said," Susannah!" shocked by her daughter's violent behavior.

"What? I was tired!"

**I flung his hand away, and saw, with satisfaction, that the mirror had stopped shaking. But then I happened to glance at his face.**

**Ghosts don't have blood. How can they? They aren't alive. But I swear, at that moment, all the blood that had once been there had evaporated just at that moment.**

**Not being alive, and not possessing blood, it follows that ghosts aren't made of matter, either. So it didn't make sense that I had been able to grab his finger. My hand should have passed right through him. Right?**

Helen, Andy, Jake, Brad, and David nodded.

**Wrong.**

"?"

**"That's how it works for most people. But not for people like me. Not for the mediators. We can see ghosts, we can talk to ghosts, and if necessary, we can kick a ghost's butt.**

**"So now there's a guy in Suze's room that we can't touch, hear, or see but Suze can! Fantastic!"**

**But this isn't something I like to go advertising. I try to avoid touching them – touching anybody, really – as much as possible. If all attempts at mediation have failed, and I have to use a little physical coercion on a recalcitrant spirit, I generally prefer him or her not to know beforehand that I am capable of doing so. Sneak attacks are always advisable when dealing with members of the underworld, who are notoriously dirty fighters.**

"Whatever helps you sleep at night."

**Jesse, looking down at his finger as if I'd burned a hole through it, seemed perfectly incapable of saying anything. It was probably the first time he'd been touched by anyone in a century and a half. That kind of thing can blow a guy's mind. Especially a dead guy.**

"I'm hoping that's all you've touched."

"Slee- Jake!"

"What?" Jake said, feigning innocence.

**I took advantage of his astonishment, and said, in my sternest, most no-nonsense , look, Jesse. This is my room, understand? You can't stay here. You've either got to let me help you get to where you're supposed to go, or you're going to have to find some other house to haunt. I'm sorry but that's the way it is."**

"You better," Jake and Brad said glaring at Jesse.

**esse looked up from his finger, his expression still one of utter disbelief. "Who are you?" he asked, softly. "What kind of...girl are you?"**

**He hesitated so long before he said the word girl that it was clear he wasn't at all certain it was appropriate in my case. This kind of bugged me.I mean, I may not have been the most popular girl in school, but no one ever denied I was an actual girl. Truck drivers honk at me at crosswalks and then, and not because they want me to get out of the way. Construction workers sometimes holler rude things at me, especially when I wear my leather miniskirt.**

Jesse felt a twinge of annoyment at men hollering and making innapropiate comments at his _querida._

**I am not unattractive or mannish in any way. Sure, I'd just threatened to break his finger off, nit that didn't mean I wasn't a girl, for God's sake!**

**"I'll tell you what kind of girl I'm not," I said, crankily. "I am not the kind of girl who's looking to share her room with a member of the opposite sex. Understand me? So either you move out, or I force you out. It's entirely up to you. I'll give you some time to think about it. But when I get back here, Jesse, I want you gone."**

"YES PLEASE!"

**turned round and left.**

**I had to. I don't usually lose arguments with ghosts, but I had a feeling I was losing that one, and badly. I shouldn't have been so short with him, and I shouldn't have been rude. I don't know what came over me, I really don't. I just...**

**I guess I just wasn't expecting to find the ghost of such a cute guy in my bedroom, is all.**

Susannah blushed lightly.

**God, I thought, as I stormed down the hall. What am I going to do if he doesn't leave? I won't be able to change clothes in my own room!**

"Torture him and hurl him away in a dumpster?"

**Give him a little time, a voice inside my head went. It was a voice I'd very carefully avoided telling my mom's therapist him a little time. He'll come around. They always do.**

**Well, most of the time, anyway.**

"That's a wrap, who wants to go next?"

"I will," said Jesse. He stood up and gently grabbed the book and went back to his seat.

Andy said," I propose that we read 1 more entry and then go to sleep how does that sound?"

A murmur of agreement rang around the room and for now continued reading.


	5. Chapter Four

Jesse read

**Dinner at the Ackerman household was pretty much like dinner in any other large household I had ever known: everybody talked at once – expect of course for Sleepy, who only spoke when asked a direct question – and nobody wanted to clear the table afterwards. I made a mental not to call Gina and tell her she'd been wrong. There really was no advantage that I could see, in having brothers: they chewed with their mouths open, and ate every single Poppin' Fresh bread roll before I'd even had one.**

Andy shook his head disappointedly at his sons' manner.

**After dinner, I decided it would be wise to avoid my room, and give Jesse plenty of time to make up his mind about whether he was leaving with or without his teeth. I'm not a big fan of violence,**

Brad seriously doubted this, remembering the time she punched him in the gut.

**but it's an unfortunate by-product of my profession. Sometimes, the only way you can make someone listen is with your fist.**

"Susannah!" Helen scolded her child.

**This is not a technique espoused, I know, by the diagnostic manuals on most therapists' again, nobody ever said I was a therapist**"

"Uh-huh."

**The problem with my plan, of course, was that it was Saturday night. I'd forgotten what day it was all in the stress of the move. Back home on a Saturday night, I'd probably have gone out with Gina, taken the subway to the Village and gone to see a movie or just hung around Joe's Pizza watching people walk by. Hey, I may be a big city girl, but that doesn't mean my life was glamorous by any means. I have never even been asked out by a boy,**

"Dweeb." someone said not so discreetly (three guesses who said that)

"What did you say?" said Susannah glaring at him.

"Nothing."

"Good."

**unless you count that time in fifth grade when Daniel Bogue asked me to skate with him during a couple's only song at Rockefeller Centre's ice then I'd embarrassed myself by falling flat on my face.**

The two eldest brothers were guffawing while Andy, Helen and David were trying to hold in their snickering.

**My mom, however, was all anxious for me to throw myself into the social scene of Carmel. As son as the dishwasher was loaded, she was like, "Brad, what are you doing tonight? Are they any parties or anything? Maybe you could take Suze and introduce her to some people." Dopey, who was mixing himself a protein shake – apparently the two dozen jumbo shrimps and massive shell steak he'd consumed at dinner hadn't been filling enough – went, "yeah, maybe I could, if Jake wasn't working tonight."Sleepy, roused by the mention of his name squinted down at his watch and said, "damn," picked up his jean jacket, and left the looked at the clock and made a tsk-tisking noise. "Late again. He's going to get himself fired if he doesn't watch it."**

"I'm too valuabe for that."

**"Peninsula Pizza," Doc was performing some sort of bizarre experiment which involved the dog and my mother's treadmill. The dog, who was huge – a cross between a St Bernard and a bear, I think – was sitting patiently on the floor while Doc attached electrodes to small patches of the dog's skin he shaved free of fire. The strangest thing was nobody seemed to mind this, least of all the dog.**

"David's always conducting some sort experiment or project."

**"Slee- I mean, Jake works in a pizza place?" Andy scouring a baking dish in the sink, said, "He delivers for them. Brings home a bundle of tips." "He's saving up" Dopey informed me, a thick white milkshake moustache on his upper lip. **

"So intelligent," teased to everyone's suprise David

"Shuddup." Brad's face tinged a little red.

**"For a Camaro" "Huh" I said. "You guys want me to drop you anywhere?" Andy offered generously. "I'd be happy to. Whaddaya say, Brad? Want to show Suze the action down at the mall?" "Nah," Dopey said, wiping his mouth with the sleeve of his sweatshirt.**

Shaking her head Helen said, "What's wrong with napkins?"

**"Everybody's still up in Tahoe for the break. Next weekend maybe."I nearly collapsed with relief. The word mall always filled me with a sort of horror, a horror that had nothing to do with the undead. They don't have malls in New York City, but Gina used to love to take the PATH train to this one in New Jersey. Usually after an hour, I develop sensory overload, and have to sit down in This Can't Be Yogurt and sip an herbal tea until I calmed down.**

"Fretful, aren't you Suze?" Jake said.

Susannah said, "Am not!" at the same time Helen said," Yes, she is."

**And I have to admit, I wasn't that thrilled with the idea of anybody 'dropping' me somewhere. My God, what was wrong with this place? I could see how, given the San Andreas Fault, subways might not be such a great idea, but why hadn't anybody established a decent bus system? "I know" Dopey said, slamming his empty glass down. "I'll play you a few games of Coolboarder, Suze."**

'_which I won eight times.' _ Susannah thought triumphantly.

**I blinked at him. "You'll what?" "I'll play you in Coolboarder" when my expression remained blank, Dopey said. "You never heard of Coolboarder? Come on."**

"That was actually kind of nice," Susannah said. Everyone looked at her like she had grown three heads. "For you, anyways." she added grudgingly. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief, the world had gone back to normal.

**He led me towards the wide-screen TV in the den. Coolboarder, it turned out, was a video game. Each player got assigned a snowboarder, and then you raced each other down various slopes using a joystick to control how fast your boarder went and what kind of fancy moves she might make.I beat Dopey at it eight times. Sensing that I had probably erred in some way – I guess I should have let the boy win at least once – I tried to make amends by volunteering to supply the popcorn, and went into the kitchen. It was only then that a wave of tiredness hit me. There is a three-hour time difference between New York and California, so even though it was only nine o-clock, I was as tired as if it was midnight. Andy and my mom had retired to the massive master bedroom, but they had left the door to it wide open, I guess so that we wouldn't get any wrong ideas about what they were doing in there. **

"True."

**Andy was reading a spy novel and my mother was watching a made-for-TV movie. This, I was sure, was strictly for the benefit of us kids; most other Saturday nights I bet they'd have closed that door, or least have gone out with Andy's friends or my mom's new colleagues at the TV station in Monterey where she'd been hired. They were obviously trying to establish some sort of domestic pattern to make us kids feel more secure. You had to give them snaps for doing their best. I wondered, as I stood there, waiting for the popcorn to pop, what my dad thought of all of this. He hadn't been too enthused about Mom's remarrying,**

"Oh dear. . . ," Helen said. Andy was feeling pretty uncomfortable at the moment.

**The point, Dad," I said to him, "is that you aren't supposed to be popping in on me. You're supposed to be doing whatever it is dead people do, not spying on me and Mom. He'd looked sort of hurt by that. "I'm not spying" he'd said. "I'm just checking up. To make sure you're happy and all of that."  
"Well I am," I assured him. "I'm very happy and so is Mom."**

"He shouldn't be worrying about us, like Suzie said we're happy."

**I'd been lying of course.**

Helen looked at her daughter, "Why didn't you say anything Suzie?"

"Well..." Not sure what to say she answered smiling, " Well I want you to be happy well, I am happy now."

**Not about Mom, but about me. I'd been a nervous wreck at the prospect of moving. Even now, I wasn't really sure it was going to work out. This thing with Jesse...i mean, where was my dad, anyway? Why wasn't he upstairs kicking that guy's butt? Jesse was, after all, a boy, and he was in my bedroom, and fathers are supposed to hate that kind of thing...**

Andy turning his gaze to Jesse said, " I do."

**But that's the thing about ghosts. They are never around when you actually need them. Even if they happen to be your dad.**

**I guess I must have zoned out for a little while because next thing I knew, the microwave was dinging. I took the popcorn out and opened the bag. I was pouring it into a big wooden bowl when my mom came into the kitchen and switched on the overhead light. Hi honey, she said. Then she looked at me. "Are you all right, Suzie?" "Sre, Mom" I said. I shovelled some popcorn into my mouth. "Dope – I mean, Brad and I are gonna watch a movie." **

**"Are you sure?"My mother was peering at me curiously. "Are you sure, you're all right?"**

**"Yeah, I'm fine. Just tired, is all"**

**She looked relieved. "Oh, yes. Well I expected you'd have a bit of jet lag. But...well, it's just that you looked so upset when you first walked into your room upstairs. I know the canopy bed was a bit much but I couldn't resist."**

**I chewed. I was totally used to this kind of thing. "The bed's fine, Mom," I said. "The room's fine too."**

**"I'm so glad," my mom said, pushing a strand of hair from my eyes. "I'm so glad you like it, Suze." My mother looked so relieved, I sort of felt sorry for her, in a way. I mean, she's a nice lady and doesn't deserve to have a mediator for a daughter.**

"Suzie! I'm perfectly happy with who you are." Helen said truthfully.

**I know I've always been a bit of a disappointment to her.**

"Never. Only when you were arrested or suspended, all right."

Susannah nodded feeling slightly happier.

**When I turned fourteen, she got me my own phone line, thinking so many boys would be calling me, her friends would never be able to get through. You can imagine how disappointed she was when nobody except Gina ever called me on my private line, and then it was usually only to tell me about the dates she'd been on. Like I said, the boys in my neighbourhood were never much interested in asking me out.**

"Maybe because they're scared of you."

**My poor mom. She always wanted a nice, normal teenage daughter. Instead she got me.**

**"Honey," she said. "Don't you want to change? You've been wearing those same clothes since six o'clock this morning, haven't you?"**

**She asked me this right as Doc was coming in to get more glue for his electrodes. Not that I was going to say anything like, **_**well, to tell you the truth, Mom. I'd like to change but I'm not real excited about doing it in front of the ghost of the dead cowboy that's living in my room.**_

"That'd be pretty funny," David said his lips threatning to expose his laughter.

**Instead, I shrugged and said, with elaborate casualness. "Yeah, well, I'm gonna change in a bit"**

**"Are you sure you don't want help unpacking? I feel terrible. I should have-"**

**"No, I don't need any help. I'll unpack in a bit" I watched Doc forage through a drawer. "I better go" I said. "I don't want to miss the beginning of the movie"**

**Of course, in the end, I missed the beginning, middle and end of the movie. I fell asleep on the couch, and didn't wake up until Andy shook my shoulder a little after eleven.**

**"Up and at 'em kiddo" he said. "I think it's time to admit you've gone down for the count. Don't worry. Brad won't tell anybody"**

**I got up, groggily and made my way up to my room. I headed straight for the windows, which I yanked open. To my relief there was no Jesse to block the way.**

Andy and the two eldest shot a look at Jesse. "You better not be back there."

Which to Susannah's and Jesse's uneasiness would not happen anytime soon.

**Yes. I've still got it.**

**I grabbed my duffel bag and went into the bathroom where I showered and, just to be on the safe side – I didn't know for sure whether or not Jesse had gotten the message and vamoosed – changed into my pyjamas.**

"Nice plan." approved Jake.

**When I came out of the bathroom, I was a little more awake. I looked around, feeling the cool breeze seeping in, smelling the salt in the air. Unlike back in Brooklyn where our ears were under constant assault by sirens and car alarms, it was quiet in the hills, the only sound the occasional hoot of an owl.**

**I found, rather to my surprise, that I was alone. Really alone. A ghost-free zone. Exactly what I'd always wanted.**

**I got into bed and clapped my hands, dousing the lights. Then I snuggled deep beneath my crisp new sheets.**

**Just before I fell asleep again, I thought I heard something besides the owl. It sounded like someone singing the words __****Oh, Susannah, now don't you cry for me, 'cause I come from Alabama with this banjo on my knee.**

The boys narrowed their eyes when Jesse started turning red.

Jake threatened," That not better have been you."

Jesse really couldn't help it when he did that so he did the next safest thing. He hid his face across the pages and continued reading. He normally woudn't back down but it wouldn't calm them down to confirm their beliefs that he had come back to his _querida's _room.

**But that, I'm sure, was just my imagination.**

He put the book down and soon everyone departed for their rooms.


	6. Author's Note : GoodBad News

Okay, I'm really sorry for being absent and not writing at all , not trying to make ecuses here but I've double exams and I've had to cram. And all that time was/is my writing time. But now school is officially over so I can now write freely as I wish.

I have some good news and bad. I think I'll start with the bad. the bad is I take it you've heard that stories are being deleted as we speak throughout the site, IDK if I'm in danger but no 1 can be too cautious. Good news is I've started uploading this story to just in case of deletion. I'll leave the link here! I promise I'll start writing tomorrow since it's 2 AM here.

Link:  5044587-reading-the-mediator-shadowland

_**Bonne Nuit! ( Good Night!)**_


	7. Chapter 7

The next morning, after departing from their own rooms,Andy made breakfast for everyone and sat down in the dining room table along with everyone.

As per usual, the three Ackerman boys were stuffing their mouths with Andy's food and threw the occasional glare Jesse's way which was expected , Helen was just pondering over what they had read yesterday and wondered if she really knew her daughter at all. Susannah and Jesse were trying not to look at each other too much. And Andy would throw the occasional glance at Jesse and Susannah.

Jesse about to thank Andy for breakfast, was interrupted by the man himself.

"So . . . . assuming you are Ghost Jesse . . . what are your intentions towards Susannah?"

Jesse was about to answer with god-knows what answer when a note fluttered down on the table.

Suze grabbed it an read out-loud :

**Dear Ackerman family and Jesse,**

**Please proceed to read the books **

**~Anonymous **

Andy just gave Jesse a look and mouthed when no one noticed : This talk is not over.

Jesse nodded awkwardly.

Brad looked like he was about to start to whine and sulk when Jake slapped him in the back of the head and they soon bustled back into the room. Helen went by the coffee table around the couches and asked, "Who wants to read next?"

Jesse sat next David being David volunteered.

"Okay I'll start." David said when everyone was seated. (A/N : Seating Chart: ]Jesse, Helen, Susannah ] [ Andy, Brad, Jake, David]

**The Junipero Serra Catholic Academy, grades K-12, had been made co-educational in the eighties, and had, much to my relief, recently dropped its strict uniform uniforms had been royal blue and white, not my best colours. Fortunately, the uniforms had been so unpopular**

The Ackerman boys shuddered in mention of their past uniform.

**That they, like the boys-only rule, had been abandoned, and though the pupils couldn't wear jeans, they could wear just about anything else they wanted. Since all I wanted was to wear my extensive collection of designer clothing – purchased at various outlet stores in New Jersey with Gina as my fashion coordinator – this suited me fine.**

"Of course," Helen said fondly, shaking her head at her daughter's thoughts.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Suze said rhetorically, raising an eyebrow.

**The Catholic thing, though, was going to be a problem. Not really a problem so much as an inconvenience. **

"Inconvenience?"

**You see, my mother never really bothered to raise me in any particular religion. My father was a non-practising Jew, my mother Christian. Religion had never played an important part in either of my parents' lives, and, needless to say, it had only served to confuse me. I mean, you would think I'd have a better grasp on religion that anybody,**

"Pretty accurate for you since you guide souls onto the afterlife." David commented.

**but the truth is, I haven't the slightest idea what happens to the ghosts I send off to wherever it is they're supposed to go after they die. **

"How comforting," Jake added with a grimace to his face.

**All I know is, once I send them there, they do not come back. Not ever. The end.**

"Real informative there Suze." Brad said, sarcastically earning a smack to the back of his head from Jake.

**So when my mother and I showed up at the Mission School's administrative office the Monday after my arrival in sunny California, I was more than a little taken aback to be confronted with a six-foot Jesus hanging on a crucifix behind the secretary's desk.**

"That is a little overbearing." Helen nodded in agreement.

**I shouldn't have been surprised, though. My mom had pointed out the school from my room on Sunday morning as she helped me unpack. "See that big red dome?" she'd said. "That's the Mission. The dome covers the chapel." Doc happened to be hanging around**

"That's because you're a loser." Brad muttered, but instead echoed around the room. David's ears slowly turned red.

"Brad!" Helen and Andy chided him.

"Another comment like that no TV for a week." Andy said, warningly.

**I'd noticed he did that a lot – and he launched into another one of his descriptions, this time of the Franciscans, who were members of a Roman Catholic religious order that followed the rule of St Francis, approved in 1209. **

"Ughh," complained Brad covering his ears for this bit.

Andy sent him another warning look.

**Father Junipero Serra, a Franciscan monk, was, according to Doc, a tragically misunderstood historical figure. A controversial hero in the Catholic Church, he had been considered for sainthood at one time, but, Doc explained, Native Americans questioned this move as 'a general endorsement of the exploitative colonization tactics of the Spanish. Though Junipero Serra was known to have argued on behalf of the property rights and economic entitlement of the converted Native Americans, he consistently advocated against their right to self-governance, and was a staunch supporter of corporal punishment, appealing to the Spanish government for the right to flog Indians.**

"How do you know so much?" Jake asked David, shaking his head.

**When Doc had finished this particular lecture, I just looked at him and went 'photographic memory much?" He looked embarrassed. "Well" he said. "It's good to know the history of the place where you're living." I filed this away for future reference. Doc might be just the person I needed if Jesse showed up again.**

Everyone's heads snapped (except Suze and Jesse's of course) towards him.

David was starting to feel uncomfortable with all the staring so he asked, "What?"

"Did you, when he showed up?" Jake said, pointing a finger towards Jesse looking somewhat uncomfortable.

"That's for me to know and you to find out." David said cryptically, with a smug smile on his face.

**I couldn't understand it. Where were all the ghosts?**

"You know I'm starting to think you like this mediator business."Jake said, looking thoughful for once.

"I don't." Suze said with a glare that should've have smoldered him to ashes.

**Maybe they were afraid to hang around the place. I was a little afraid, looking up at that crucifix. I mean, I've got nothing against religious art, but was it really necessary to portray the crucifixion so realistically, with so many scabs and all?**

Everyone cringed and the answer to _that_ was crystal clear_ , _and yes _even _to Brad.

**Apparently, I was not alone in thinking so since a boy who was slumped on a couch across from the one where my mom and I had been instructed to wait noticed the direction of my gaze and said, "He's supposed to weep tears of blood if any girl ever graduates from here a virgin."**

Jake, Brad, and David suddenly burst out laughing hysterically.

"What?" Helen questioned, looking a bit mad.

The boys started laughing even harder, their faces turning diffrent shades of red.

Andy finally had enough so he individually slapped each on the back of their heads and started looking innocent when the boys turned to him glaring and rubbing the backs of their heads.

"Honestly, it's not even that funny." Suze puffed out, looking indignant while Jesse bore an expression of approval at her statement.

"Yeah, have some respect." Helen said firmly, half-playfully glaring at them.

**I couldn't help letting out a little bark of laughter. My mother glared at me. The secretary, a plump middle-aged woman who looked as if something that ought to have offended her deeply only rolled her eyes and said, tiredly. "Oh, Adam."**

**Adam, a good looking boy about my age, looked at me with a perfectly serious face. "It's true," he said gravely. "It happened last year. My sister," he dropped his voice conspiratorially. "She's adopted."**

The Ackerman boys started chuckling again but decided to stop when they caught nearly everybody's expressions.

**I laughed again, and my mother frowned at me. She had spent most of yesterday explaining to me that it had been really, really hard to convince the school to take me, especially since she couldn't produce any proof that I'd ever been baptized. In the end, they'd only let me in because of Andy, since all three of his boys went there. I imagine a sizable donation had also played a part in my admittance,**

"Yep. That's the only you'd be able to get in anyways." Brad snickered, quietly but loud enough for Suze to hear.

"What did you say?" Suze rose up from her seat, trying to act mad & raising a balled fist.

Before Brad could say Helen had chimed in ," Susannah Simon! Sit down right this instant. What did I tell you about fighting?" she chided.

Suze sat down and mocked her half-heartedly under her breath but it was apparent that from her mother's expression that she heard her.

**But my mother wouldn't tell me that. **

"Of course she didn't."

**All she said was that I had better behave myself, and not hurl anything out of any windows – even though I reminded her that that particular incident hadn't been my fault. I'd been fighting with a particularly violent young ghost who'd refused to quit haunting the girls' locker room at my old school. Throwing him through that window had certainly gotten his attention, and convinced him to tread the path of righteousness ever after.**

**"**What kind of ghosts have you ran into Suze?" Doc asked with this curious look on his young face.

**Of course, I told my mother that I'd been practising my tennis swing indoors, and the racket had slipped from my hands**

"That one was rather unbelievable don't you think but at least more uncomplicated than the actual truth."

– **An especially unbelievable story, since a racket was never found.**

**It was as I was reliving this painful memory that a heavy wooden door opened, and a priest came out and said, "Mrs Ackerman, what a pleasure to see you again. And this must be Susannah Simon. Come in, won't you?" he ushered us into his office, the paused, and said to the boy on the couch. "Oh, no, Mr. McTavish. Not on the first day of a brand-new semester."**

**Adam shrugged. "What can I say? The broad hates me."**

"I don't know why she's even there. She hates all of the students and I mean, that's basically everyone." Jake commented, fiddling with a fabric on his shirt. "Excluding Father Dominic, the monsignor, and the sisters. Why she doesn't leave I'll never understand.**" **he added thoughtfully.

"You're just pissed because she caught you sleeping during Mass and in class." Brad said, smirking when Jake turned red.

"Shuddup." Jake said chucking a pillow at his face.

**"Kindly do not refer to Sister Ernestine as a broad, Mr. McTavish. I will see to you in a moment, after I have spoken with these ladies."**

**We went in, and the principal, Father Dominic – that was his name – sat and chatted with us for a while, asking me how I liked California so far."**

"Father Dominic's such a nice, caring and gentle man don't you think?" Helen asked brightly.

Everyone of course agreed, having been acquainted him with some time.

"I can't imagine him being involved in anything dangerous."

_"What an oxymoron. If only you knew..." _thought Suze.

**I said I liked it fine, especially the ocean. We had spent most of the day before at the beach, after I'd finished unpacking. I had found my sunglasses, and even though it was too cold to swim, I had a great time just lying on a blanket on the beach watching the waves. They were huge, bigger than on Baywatch and Doc spent most of the afternoon explaining to me why that was. **

**I forget now since I was so drugged by the sun, I was hardly even listening.**

**I found that I loved the beach, the smell of it, the seaweed that washed up on shore, the feel of the cool sand between my toes, the taste of salt on my skin when I got home. Carmel might not have had a Bagel Bob's but Manhattan sure didn't have no beach.**

"I know right." commented Helen, looking wistful.

**Father Dominic expressed his sincere hope that I'd be happy at the Mission Academy, and went on to explain that even though I wasn't Catholic, I shouldn't feel unwelcome at Mass. There were of course, Holy Days of Obligation when the Catholic students would be required to leave their lessons behind and go to church. I could either join them, or stay behind in the empty classroom, whatever I chose.**

"And of course, I stay behind." Suze said smiling, not noticing Jesse looking at her.

**I thought it was kind of funny, for some reason, but I managed to keep from laughing. Father Dominic was old, but what you'd probably call spry, and he struck me as sort of handsome**

"See I knew it! You're crushing on Father D!" Brad exclaimed gleefully, pointing an accusing finger at Suze.

"I have no such thing." Suze said, half of her expression looking disgusted.

The rest of the room just rolled their eyes fondly at the banter.

**In his white collar and black robes – I mean handsome for a sixty-year-old. He had white hair, and very blue eyes, and well maintained fingernails. I don't know many priests, but I thought this one might be all right – especially since he hadn't come down to hard on the boy in the outer office who'd called that nun a broad.**

**After Father Dominic had described the various offences I could get expelled for – skipping class too many times, dealing drugs on campus, the usual stuff.**

**He asked if I had any questions. I didn't. Then he asked my mother if she had any questions. She didn't. So then Father Dominic stood up and said, "Fine then. I'll say goodbye to you, Mrs. Ackerman, and walk Susannah to her first class. All right, Susannah?"**

**"**That's really thoughtful of him, since he seemed occupied at the time."

**I thought it was kind of weird that the principal, who probably had a lot to do, was taking time out to walk me to my first class, but I didn't say anything about it. I just picked up my coat – a black wool trench by Esprit, très chic (my mom wouldn't let me wear leather my first day of school) – and waited while he and my mother shook hands. My mom kissed me goodbye, and reminded me to find Sleepy at three, since he was in charge of driving me home – only she didn't call him Sleepy. Once again, a woeful lack of public transportation meant that I had to bum rides to and from school with my stepbrothers.**

"Maybe a bike or something like a school bus would be useful." Andy agreed, nodding his head.

**Then she was gone, and Father Dominic was walking me across the courtyard after having instructed Adam to wait for him.**

**"No prob, Padre" was Adam's response. He leered at me behind the father's back**.

"Eeew." Brad and Jake both chorused with scrunched up looks plastered on their faces.

Jesse's face just turned into one of stone, cold and hard.

**It isn't often I get leered at by boys my own age.**

"What so old guys leer at you?" Brad snorted.

**I hoped he was in my class. My mother's wishes for my social life just might be realized at last.**

**As we walked, Father Dominic explained a little about the building – or buildings, I should say since that's what they were. A series of thick walled adobe structures were connected by low-ceilinged breezeways, in the middle of which existed in the beautiful courtyard that came complete with palm trees, bubbling fountain, and a bronze statue of Father Serra with these women – your stereotypical Indian squaws, complete with papooses strapped to their backs – kneeling at his feet.**

**On the other side of the breezeway were stone benches for people to sit on while they enjoyed solitary contemplation of the courtyard's splendour, the doors to the classrooms and steel lockers were built right into the adobe wall. One of those lockers, Father Dominic explained to me, was mine. He had the combination with him. Did I want to put my coat away?**

**I had been surprised when I wakened Sunday morning to find myself shivering in my bed. I'd had to stumble out from beneath the sheets and slam my window shut. A thick fog, I saw with dismay, had enshrouded the valley, obscuring my view of the bay. I thought for sure some horrible tropical storm had rolled in**

Suze then blushed at the reminder of her running to the kitchen so fast as to make sure everything was secure then to run into Andy explaining her panic. Andy then calmly replied to her with a reassuring grin on his face the weather around here. Then she had run into Doc, also reassuring her by explaining the weather patterns.

Andy snickered into his hand clearly remembering it making her blush harder.

**but Doc had explained to me, quite patiently, that morning fog was typical in the Northwest, and that the Pacifico – Spanish for passive – was so named because of its relative lack of storms. The fog, Doc had assured me, would burn off by noon, and it would then be just as hot as it had been the day before.**

**And he'd been right. By the time I returned home from the beach, sunburned and happy, my room had become an oven again, and I'd prised the windows back open – only to find that they'd been gently shut again when I woke up this morning, which I thought was sweet of my mom, looking out for me like that.\**

"I didn't close that window." Helen said, drawing out each word slowly.

"Neither did I." Andy confirmed.

"Then who did?" asked Jake looking thoroughly confused.

Suddenly as if a lightbulb echoed through each of their heads, their necks snapped towards Jesse who was trying to squirm under their gaze.

"You have better not been back in that room." Brad threatned along with Jake.

**At least, I hope it was my mom. Now that I think about it ...but no, I hadn't seen Jesse since that first day I'd moved in. It had definitely been my mom who'd shut my windows.**

"Oh, if only that was true."

**Anyway, when I'd walked outside to get into Mom's car, I'd found that it was freezing out again, and that was why I was wearing the wool coat.**

**Father Dominic told me that my locker was number 273, and he seemed content to let me find it myself, strolling behind me with his eyes on the breezeway's rafters, in which, much to his professed delight, families of swallows nested every year. He was apparently quite fond of birds – of all animals **

"He's a very delighted, enthusiastic people kind of person."

**, actually, since one of the questions he'd asked me was how I was getting along with Max, the Ackerman's dog – and openly scoffed at Andy's repeated assurances that the timber in the breezeways was going to have to be replaced thanks to the swallows and their refuse.**

**268, 269, 270. I strolled down the open corridor, watching the numbers on the beige locker doors. Unlike the ones in my school back in Brooklyn, these lockers were not graffitied, or dented, or plastered with stickers from heavy metal bands. I guess students on the West Coast took more pride in their school's appearance than us Yankees.**

"Nope." Jake said making a popping sound. "The broad would have mutilated us if we'd dare pollute the lockers with a small sticker."

**271, 272. I stumbled to a halt.**

**In front of locker number 273 stood a ghost.**

**"**What?" Everyone seemed to echo( except well you know who)

**"**Ah. The moment of truth." Doc said, rubbing his hands together similar to a scientist's.

**It wasn't Jesse, either.**

"Thank god."

**It was a girl dressed very much like I was, only with long blonde hair, instead of brown, like mine. She also had an extremely unpleasant look on her face.**

"Wait ... is that who I think it is?"

**"What," she said, to me, "Are you looking at?" then, speaking to someone behind me, she demanded, "this is who they let in to take my place? I am so sure."**

**Ok, I admit it. I freaked out. I spun around, and found myself gaping up at Father Dominic, who was squinting down at me curiously.**

**"Ah," he said when he saw my face. "I thought so."**

"WHAT?!"

And it seemed at that moment that the whole room exploded into yells.


End file.
